Hello. I'm Christopher Wilson, the director of public affairs and advocacy for the Canadian Lung Association. With me is Dr. Andrew Halayko, who is the chair of the research committee of our medical arm, the Canadian Thoracic Society.
Today we want to highlight the urgent need to increase federal funding for practical patient-focused research on respiratory illnesses. There are three strong reasons why this should be a national health priority.
First of all, the incidence of respiratory illnesses like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, is rising nationally, even as the burden of other diseases like cancer, breast cancer, and heart disease are falling.
Second, lung diseases are very costly in human and economic terms. They affect over six million Canadians and they know no socio-economic, age, or gender barriers. Asthma is the leading cause of emergency room visits for children, and COPD is the leading cause of repeat hospitalizations among all major illnesses, frequently involving admission to costly intensive care units. Lung cancer has by far the highest mortality rate of any form of cancer.
The annual economic burden of lung disease is conservatively estimated at $15 billion, including the cost of treatment, productivity losses, and premature deaths.
Third, the current investment in respiratory research is nowhere near enough to properly address and lower the heavy economic and health burden of lung disease. Respiratory illness accounts for 10% of the total disease burden in Canada but receives only 4.5% of research funding allocated by CIHR, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
In contrast, cardiovascular disease and cancer, with only slightly higher shares of the disease burden—12% each—receive much higher allocations of research funding: 2.5 and 4 times higher, respectively.
The current low level of funding greatly limits the impact of our research and threatens our ability to train and retain the talented clinical researchers Canada needs.
What are we proposing for the federal budget? An increase for 2011-12 of $10 million for respiratory research from the current $36 million to $46 million, to be used exclusively for practical research that will result in improvements in patient care and outcomes. We're also recommending increases over the next five years to bring funding to a level that matches the burden of disease.
I realize that it may sound strange to be advocating for greater investments in research at a time when deficit cutting is the order of the day. However, we are putting our proposal forward as an investment that will pay for itself and help reduce burgeoning health care costs through more effective management of lung disease.
To give you an idea of what patient-oriented research can accomplish, I'd like to call on my colleague to take over.